1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to such display device and method for driving the same that uses a current-control type self-emission element such as an organic electro-luminescent (EL) element or a light emitting diode (LED).
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, this type of a practical display device has typically employed a passive matrix driving method. By the passive matrix driving method, however, an instantaneous current and a driving voltage both rise remarkably in a high duty-ratio driving period, thus inevitably restricting the number of scan electrodes that can be driven at a time. It is, therefore, difficult to employ the passive matrix driving method to realize a relatively high-definition display device that requires a few hundreds of scan electrodes.
In this view, recently, there has been much research and development conducted for practical application of an active matrix driving method that can substitute for the passive matrix driving method. By the active matrix driving method, a switching element (driving element) is disposed at each picture element at each of the intersection between scan electrodes and signal electrodes in a matrix, for lower power dissipation and higher definition.
As the driving element used in the active matrix driving method, a thin film transistor (TFT) has been tried to be used in a variety of manners and researches; to drive a current control type self emission element, however, the TFT must be used two for each picture element, to resultantly decrease the numeric aperture, which is accompanied by also a complicated manufacturing process, thus leading to a problem of a decrease in yield.
To solve the problem, such a proposal is made to use a thyrister as the driving element by an invention disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2000-299192.
By this invention, however, the thyrister itself is controlled in driving by controlling a voltage applied across, so that, as described in such a specification, an organic EL element will be lit up, even if a little (4.5 cd/m2), as against illumination thereof (100 cd/m2) even in a period for which it must not be lit up.